With the advent of the Internet, more and more businesses in a wide range of industries have been adopting new technologies for improved distribution of information contained in traditionally printed documents onto Web pages can that be viewed through the Internet using devices that can retrieve and view this information in a digital format. These technological advances have increased productivity and efficiency so that faster distribution of information, greater efficiency, greater effectiveness, and more customized solutions are becoming the expected norm for communicating information in a digital form. The increase in customized and personalized distribution of information has also had a positive impact on business-to-business transactions, as companies, individuals and other entities, including educational and financial institutions, are working together more to create customized solution to tailored to a customer's needs.
Educational institutions and financial institutions have adopted technologies to improve the dissemination of financial aid information to consumers, such as students, potential students, and their families. For example, both educational and financial institutions may offer information about financing a college or graduate education in both printed documents and digital Internet Web pages. Educational and financial institutions have traditionally created printed “brochures” containing this information and distributed these documents manually to interested customers.
For example, the institution may create a printed document that contains information about how a student can apply for a Stafford student loan. The document may contain information that has been specifically customized for a particular institution. The printed document may contain colors, images, and contact information specific to that institution. Traditionally, printed documents have been created using an iterative process where several drafts of the document are communicated between the customer institution(s), a print design company, and a print production company. On occasion, the print design company and the print production company are the same company. The “drafts” of the document have traditionally been communicated to each party manually, using a fax machine, or postal mail and any requested changes to the document manually marked on the “draft” printed document. Once the contents of the document have been modified to the agreement of all parties, a final proof of the document is created by the print design firm using any number of proprietary document design and print software products. The final document proof is then sent to the printer for production printing of the document.
More recently, a new technological process has emerged to eliminate the need to communicate drafts of printed documents manually, via fax, or postal mail. Many companies have begun to offer a service known as “Web-to-print” for printed document creation and review. This process will typically utilize a digital document format from Adobe Corporation known as “PDF.” The PDF digital document can be constructed to represent a very close facsimile to an equivalent printed document.
The most common “Web-to-print” document creation process requires the creation of a digital document created in PDF format. The PDF file is communicated via the Internet between the customer, the print design firm, and the print production company as an email attachment. The document is then opened and viewed using Adobe's freely distributed PDF viewer allowing the reader of the document to electronically note and communicate desired changes to the document. Once the digital PDF is ready for printing, the file is sent directly to the print device for production printing of the document. This process has become popular as it significantly reduces the time required to distribute and approve “draft” variations of the document prior to authorizing sending a document to a printing device for production printing of documents.
As the Internet has matured and has become readily accessible to many, industries, including education and financial institutions, have created Internet Web pages that are used to communicate the same information that is contained in printed documents. Today the process for creating these Web pages utilizes a different set of technologies, skills, and systems to build them. An institution will typically contract with a company that employs people that know how to build and deploy Internet Web systems and pages. The institution will work with the Web page design and development company to create Web pages that will communicate the information that the institution desires to be communicated to its customers that visit the institution's Web site. The company that designs and develops the printed documents is rarely the same company that will build the Internet Web pages. As a consequence of this technology divergence, institutions must now use two very different processes for creating their printed documents and their Web pages, which often contain the same or similar information.
An observation could be made that the print production industry considers the use of Internet Web pages as a threat to its industry as it will over time reduce the need to distribute information utilizing printed documents. In a similar fashion, the Internet Web page development companies and technology development firms believe that the production of printed documents is a dying industry and therefore these companies have no desire to offer products, services, or technologies that aid the production of printed documents.
Thus, there is a need for an online suite of easy-to-use tools to help automate the cumbersome process of ordering, customizing and printing materials, both for the creation of printed documents and Web-based versions of the same documents.